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I cupped her cheek. “I am,” I promised. “I’ve never been more serious.”
“How will that work?”
Reality was pushing into our hazy bubble of happiness, but I knew she was right to ask. There was so much to consider going forward. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I mean, you could go back to St. Francisville once Elias is done with treatment, or…or you could come to DC with me.”
Nataliya was quiet for a long time. “I think Elias and I would need to stay here for a while,” she admitted. “It will be a while before the treatment is finished.” She looked at me again, and there was this pervasive shyness that I’d never seen in her face before. “But afterward, if you truly didn’t mind?—”
“I want you to,” I said. “I want us to be a family: you, me, and Elias.”
Her smile was dazzling; she dropped a kiss to my chest. “I want that too.”
“We’ll get your ID back too,” I said. “I want you to live your life as Nataliya Koza again. No more aliases for either of you.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“You helped to bring down an international criminal,” I said. “I think we can leverage that to get you a proper Green Card.”
“I won’t hold my breath, okay?” she said. “I’ll let you do whatever you think is best, but?—”
I squeezed her to me. “I get it.” It would be difficult for anyone to trust the same organizations that screwed them over in the past. But now that Ian Hayes was caught, I was confident things would be different. I hoped, anyway. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thank you for being trustworthy.”
TWENTY-SIX
NATALIYA
Six Months Later
Hospital antiseptic was surely eating a hole in my nose. I squirmed in the uncomfortable waiting room chair and rubbed my face for the hundredth time. “Sweetheart,” Adrian said from beside me, leaning into me, “you’re too pretty to wear a hole in your cheek.”
“I hate waiting.”
“I know,” he soothed.
“What if it’s bad news? They’ve been back there a long time.”
Sam had come to DC to check on Elias’s progress. She had gotten hospital privileges and commandeered a part of the lab so she could personally see to his lab results. Out of all of the participants who were testing her vaccine, she kept a special eye on Elias, and for that, Sam would always be a friend of mine.
“Sam just wants to be certain,” Owen, who had come up with Sam, said kindly. I appreciated that he came with her, and I’d said as much when they arrived the night before, but Owen and Sam both shrugged it off. They were going to do some sightseeing in DC while they were in, and Myles’s paternal grandparents were relishing in getting to spoil the little boy rotten for a few days back home in Birmingham.
“I know,” I said. “I’m just?—”
“Anxious,” Owen offered.
“Freaking the hell out,” Adrian added.
“Both.” I wanted to curl up into a ball to cry, but I settled for Adrian slinging his arm over my shoulders and pulling me into the comforting warmth of his body.
“How do you like DC?” Owen asked, doing his level best to distract me. Bless him.
“It’s different from living in Louisiana,” I said. Elias and I moved up to be with Adrian shortly after Elias’s last dose of the Loorer’s vaccine. By then, Adrian had already been back in DC for a while, having to return to work when his leave ran out. That time apart had only confirmed for the both of us what we already knew: that we wanted to be together from now on. “I mean, the summer was still humid, but it wasn’t completely awful.”
Adrian snorted. “Winters are a touch colder than Louisiana though.”
That made me smile, and I poked him in his abs, making him flinch. “Did you forget where I grew up? Winter in the RoW was brutal and?—”
“I know,” Adrian cut off my growing rant with a teasing eye roll. “My girl’s a badass like that.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek.
